


upon my birth, they searched my skin and declared me empty

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Introspection, POV First Person, Queer Themes, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Vent Piece, Wordcount: 1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22350271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Finding your soulmate is no easy task.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	upon my birth, they searched my skin and declared me empty

I was born without a soulmark. 

My sister was born with a soulmark, a name scrawled in messy-boy handwriting right over her heart. _Paul,_ her skin murmurs to her, whenever she glances in a mirror. 

She’s one of the lucky ones.

She found her Paul last spring, on an accidental date in coffeeshop that ended partially in disaster when she rushed out, overwhelmed by her sudden rush of affection for an almost-total stranger. He chased after her, found her crying outside. They’ve been together ever since.

Sometimes I watch them together, curled up on the sofa at our parent’s house, resting their foreheads together and whispering sweet nothings when they think nobody is paying them any mind. A soulmark doesn’t always mean love, but somehow, they’ve managed to find it. 

I try not to be jealous. Sometimes I’m successful. 

My father’s soulmark bears a name that confused me for as long as I’d been alive and aware of what a name in black ink on one’s skin meant. I didn’t ask why it said _Elaine_ instead of _Rita,_ but when I was twelve years old, he opened his heart and bared his soul to me regardless. He’d met his Elaine, and married her. But a soulmark doesn’t always mean love, and he found that out the hard way when his Elaine demanded a divorce. 

Some people cross out their soulmarks when they realise it isn’t right. I asked him why he hadn’t. After all, there are plenty of tattoo artists who specialise in soulmarks, who can make them into beautiful works of art where the name is completely obscured. 

_It’s still a part of me,_ he said to me, his gaze heavy with nostalgia. _I wouldn’t have it any other way._

My mother’s soulmark bears my father’s name. I used to wonder how that could be, when my father’s soulmark doesn’t bear hers. She has never offered her opinion on it, and I have never asked. 

I think I’m afraid to hear the answer. 

Sometimes, I stare at myself in the mirror. Fresh from a shower, my skin pink and warm and scrubbed clean, I stare into the depths of the half-fogged glass and imagine that there’s a name staring back at me from _somewhere_ on my naked body. Black ink, put there by God’s own will, in scrawling messy-boy handwriting or beautiful cursive or sweet-and-clean girl print. 

_Evangeline,_ my imagination murmurs to me. _Steven. Trixie. Gerald._

It isn’t real, but some days, when the world is crashing down on me and it’s all I can do to get out of bed, it helps. 

Some people say that, while they weren’t born with a soulmark, it appeared when they were ready for it. It happens after a monumental shift, they say, or when they finally discovered who they really were after years of stumbling around blindly in the dark. When I read their accounts, I think through everything I have ever been through so far, and I cringe to think that I have yet another hurdle to get over. There have already been so many bridgeless chasms, I cry. How can I possibly get across another? 

Once, I thought I had met my soulmate. She had beautiful dark skin and even darker hair, and the barest hint of an accent whenever she deigned to speak. I never saw her soulmark. She covered it with makeup and refused to show it, whether to me or to anyone. _When I’m old enough_ , she told me once, _I’m going to cover it with flowers, so that the world will never know, and I’ll never have to think of it again._

I assumed that her soulmark did not contain my name, in my own ridiculous mixed sweet-and-messy scrawl. If it had, I reasoned to myself, alone in my bed at night, she would have been proud of it, instead of ashamed. 

When we separated, my heart broke and healed itself at the same time. She was not my soulmate. Of that, I was certain; there were too many late nights spent screaming at each other in anger and confusion, and too many mornings spent in tears trying to fix what had been broken. _She is not my soulmate,_ I told myself in the mirror, crossing her name off of my mental list, forever forbidding her from crossing my mind again. 

And for some reason, right then, it became easier for me to breathe. 

I don’t know who my soulmate is. I don’t know if I _have_ a soulmate, or if I ever will, or if I ever did. I don’t know if the monumental choices I’m making for myself every day will trigger a change in my soul and gently coax a name to appear on my freckled skin. I know that I yearn for a soul to complete mine, but I don’t know who I sit for hours and day and yearn _for._ It is a mystery. 

If it is a mystery, it is one that I am determined to solve. I _have_ to be. Soulmate or not, soulmark or not, there _must_ be someone out there to complete me. I feel such a hurt inside of myself, an ache that nothing will soothe, no matter how many people currently in my life attempt to provide a balm. If I find nothing else in my life, then I hope to find my soulmate. I _have_ to find my soulmate. 

I yearn for a completeness that I have never felt, and it tears me apart every day that I am forced to live in pieces. 

I was born without a soulmark, but it will not end me. I am stronger than a soulmark, with or without one. No matter the name hidden from my skin, I am myself. I am me. Black ink with a stranger’s name does not make me _me._

I was born without a soulmark, but I am finding myself first, and that… that is enough. 

It will have to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve read more than I expected you to, so thank you. This piece came to me, almost literally, in a dream, and I had to get it down before it escaped entirely from the strange empty hole that is my brain. While I don’t wish for it to resonate with anyone, my sad understanding of the world is that it will. If it resonated with you, just know that you are not alone, and that someone, someday, will find you if you’re looking. 
> 
> Kudos/comments are love. Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans.


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